No Hard Feelings – Review
103 Minutes, Rated R
Written by Gene Stupnitsky and John Phillips
Directed by Gene Stupnitsky
**NOTE: this post will be updated with audio once we actually have the chance to talk about it. Until then, you can read Mark’s review below. Remember, though, you can listen to all our discussions of this and every other movie directly over on ACAST. Stay tuned.**
Synopsis:
On the brink of losing her home, Maddie finds an intriguing job listing: helicopter parents looking for someone to bring their introverted 19-year-old son out of his shell before college. She has one summer to make him a man or die trying.
Full disclosure: I was absolutely convinced going in that this movie was going to be complete and utter garbage based on the bits I has seen and the basic premise itself. It just looked like a train wreck of a film.
Flip the script on this one and see how it goes, you know?
That said, while the train didn’t completely come off the rails, it never really figured out what it was.
There was one funny running joke, which was Maddie being called Old… a LOT. By everyone.
She’s 32 in the film.
No Hard Feelings wasn’t really raunchy enough to be classified as a true raunch comedy. There were 2 or 3 scenes that might qualify. The Can’t Buy Me Love premise has been married to the Failure to Launch premise, with Jennifer Lawrence trying to demonstrate more serious personal growth than in either of those movies, but which she was better at in last year’s Causeway.
I’m not sure why Jennifer Lawrence felt like this was a movie she had to do, but here we are.
That’s not to say the film doesn’t have some highlights. Percy, the young man Maddie is supposed to “date,” is living the dream of men everywhere…the dream from 10 years ago, with Jennifer Lawrence literally and figuratively throwing herself at him just trying to sleep with him.
That’s how shallow her early motivations are: fuck the kid and get a Buick Regal.
But Percy gamely battles on to protect his vision for his life, one that isn’t simply drunken sex in the ocean.
Percy’s parents are (barely) caricatures of the rich helicopter parents everyone loves to mock, and with good reason. Percy is stunted because they stunted him.
But in reality, he’s not really stunted; he’s simply trying to be who he is beneath their smothering, and it’s a losing battle.
Maddie is damaged, but Percy’s pure nature can make her really see that and save her.
Heck, they even through in some class warfare and gentrification material to try to flesh this out and make Maddie seem justified (?) in doing what she’s doing…
In the end, the pay-off doesn’t really justify the journey here, though your personal tastes may vary. At least one of my fellow critics says they just flat-out liked it.
Take that as you will.
But for me, the feel-good pablum was just too undeserved for the characters, and the lead-up was unworthy of the audience.
No Hard Feelings hits theaters Friday, June 23 and stars Jennifer Lawrence, Andrew Barth Feldman, Laura Benanti, Matthew Broderick, Natalie Morales, Scott MacArthur, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Kyle Mooney, and Amalia Yoo.
And remember, if the BEST thing you can say about a movie is that it’s “visually stunning,” then they’ve done something wrong.
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